Toon-Op

Wisdom of the ages

Editorial cartoonists on the European debt crisis.

As Europeans watched their economies go south (all the way to Greece), their cartoonists revisited the classics. Ireland's Peter Schrank penned a mythical Medusa from whom the euro, ahem, shrank. Wouldn't you know, Norway's Roar Hagen deployed the obligatory Trojan horse (wooden, you know). But the Netherlands' Joep Bertrams topped both with his disarmingly simple depiction of a nation unable to pull itself up from financial calamity. Certain symbols are timeless — and cartoonists will still be using them when this crisis is ancient history.

— Joel Pett

Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His work also appears in USA Today.